Is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a rogue bureaucracy, operating without regard to the needs and preferences of the executive branch? The soot regulations it issued last week, coupled with the carbon tax lurking on the near horizon, would seem to suggest it is just that.

The Obama administration doesn't need America's already clean air to be infinitesimally cleaner, and it doesn't need to thwart the increasingly dubious threat of trouble in the distant future resulting from man-caused climate change. What the administration needs now is a vigorous economic recovery in place of the feeble gains Americans have seen since President Obama took office nearly four years ago. An honest-to-goodness recovery likely would be a boon to Democrats in the midterm elections of 2014, securing Mr. Obama's place in history as a successful president, and giving him a more compliant Congress in the last two years of his presidency than the one he's dealing with now.

Instead, the EPA is killing hundreds of thousands of jobs, endangering the security of the nation's electrical generation network, and discouraging industries large and small from investing in new plants and equipment. It's inconceivable that the Obama administration could see any good in the campaign against soot. Yet it allows the EPA and its ideologue in charge, Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, to proceed unmolested.

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